McClatchy, By Renee Schoof, December 19

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama's choice of John P. Holdren as his science adviser sends a strong signal that Obama sees global warming as an urgent problem and wants bold suggestions for action.

The Harvard University environmental policy professor has argued that the world already is experiencing dangerous climate change as a result of fossil fuel combustion. He's said there's still time to avert catastrophe, but only with a strong and rapid global effort.

At a recent talk in Washington, Holdren boiled it down to this:

"Without energy there is no economy. Without climate there is no environment. Without economy and environment there's no material well-being, there's no civil society, there's no personal or national or international security. And the problem is that the way we've been getting the energy our economies need is wrecking the climate that our environment needs. That is the essence of the problem."

The Globe and Mail, By Martin Mittelstaedt, January 8

TORONTO — The world faces a “perpetual food crisis” because global warming will likely lead to massive and simultaneous crop failures in many regions, possibly as early as the period from 2040 to 2060, a new study says.

The finding, appearing in the journal Science, is based on climate models that suggest the worst heat waves of the past – such as the one in Europe in 2003 that killed at least 30,000 people – are likely to become the new normal summertime temperatures.

Although the trend to extreme heat becoming the new normal could start in some parts of the world by mid-century, well within the lifetimes of many people now alive, the researchers are confident it will become a global phenomenon between 2080 and 2100.

Rising temperatures will wither crops that are heat-sensitive, including staples such as wheat, possibly cutting yields by 20 per cent to 40 per cent, according to the study, conducted by scientists at two U.S. universities. The impact will not be as pronounced on some crops, such as millet, that are more heat tolerant but not exactly palate pleasers.

[...]

“This is going to unfold in the next 100 years,” he said, “whereas the sea-level changes are going to probably, most likely, unfold over the next 300 to 400 years.”

BBC, January 19

Quite what Keats would have made of it is anyone's guess, but "mist and mellow fruitfulness" appears to be on the decline in Europe.

The number of foggy, misty and hazy days is diminishing across the continent, say scientists who have analysed the meteorological data.

The researchers found this clearing of the air in the past 30 years may have amplified the warming of Europe.

They report their findings in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Scientists worldwide recognize that Canada's boreal forest is one of largest, most intact old-growth forests left on Earth. Rivalling the Amazon rainforest in size and ecological value, the boreal forest provides globally important, irreplaceable ecosystem services. These include tremendous carbon sequestration and storage capacity, vast reserves of fresh water, the world's most extensive wetlands, and habitat for enormous, healthy populations of wildlife, including migratory waterfowl, songbirds and caribou.

There has been much recent progress in parts of Canada to increase protections of the boreal region with commitments to protect tens of millions of acres from industrial disturbance. For example, the government of Ontario recently promised to permanently protect 55 million acres of boreal forest, one of the biggest land protection commitments in history. This commitment was largely motivated by the opportunity to protect the forest's enormous stores of carbon.
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_{Tolerating prostitution is tolerating abuse and torture of women and children.}

The world's marine ecosystems risk being severely damaged by ocean acidification unless there are dramatic cuts in CO2 emissions, warn scientists. More than 150 top marine researchers have voiced their concerns through the "Monaco Declaration", which warns that changes in acidity are accelerating.

The declaration, supported by Prince Albert II of Monaco, builds on findings from an earlier international summit. It says pH levels are changing 100 times faster than natural variability. Based on the research priorities identified at The Ocean in a High CO2 World symposium, held in October 2008, the declaration states:

"We scientists who met in Monaco to review what is known about ocean acidification declare that we are deeply concerned by recent, rapid changes in ocean chemistry and their potential, within decades, to severely affect marine organisms, food webs, biodiversity and fisheries."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7860350.stm

Range moves 35 miles in 40 years

AP, By Dina Cappiello, February 10

WASHINGTON - When it comes to global warming, the canary in the coal mine isn't a canary at all. It's a purple finch.

As the temperature across the United States has gotten higher, the purple finch has been spending its winters more than 400 miles farther north than it used to.

And it's not alone.

An Audubon Society study to be released today found that more than half of 305 bird species in North America, a hodgepodge that includes robins, gulls, chickadees, and owls, are spending the winter about 35 miles farther north than they did 40 years ago.

[...]

Over the 40 years covered by the study, the average January temperature in the United States climbed by 4.8 degrees Fahrenheit. That warming was most pronounced in Northern states, which have already recorded an influx of more Southern species and could see some Northern species retreat into Canada as ranges shift.

"This is as close as science at this scale gets to proof," said Greg Butcher, the lead scientist on the study and the director of bird conservation at the Audubon Society. "It is not what each of these individual birds did. It is the wide diversity of birds that suggests it has something to do with temperature, rather than ecology."

AP, By Shawn Pogatchnik, February 10

DUBLIN - Northern Ireland's environment minister announced yesterday he has banned British government TV ads on climate change and denounced their energy-saving message as "insidious propaganda."

Sammy Wilson has repeatedly raised eyebrows since winning the environment post in Northern Ireland's power-sharing government last year.

The hard-line Protestant, a leading light in the Democratic Unionist Party, argues that global weather patterns are naturally cooling, not warming - and humanity should invest in coping with God-driven climate change, not trying to slow down a manmade problem.

US President wants the world's two biggest polluters to form a partnership in the battle against global warming.

The Independent, By Geoffrey Lean, February 10

Barack Obama is to invite China to join the United States in an effort by the world's two biggest polluters to stop global warming running out of control.

Hillary Clinton, his Secretary of State, is to raise the prospect of a "strong, constructive partnership" to combat climate change on a visit to Beijing next week, and the President is seriously considering a proposal from many of his most senior advisers to hold a summit with the Chinese leadership to launch the plan.

Last week, China's ambassador to the US, Zhou Wenzhong, made it clear that his government would welcome "co-operation on energy and climate change" with the US. Such unprecedented teamwork would transform the world's prospects for agreeing radical measures to combat global warming, and – senior Obama administration officials believe – lay the foundation of a new relationship between the two most powerful countries in the world.

BBC, February 13

The world's fish stocks will soon suffer major upheaval due to climate change, scientists have warned.

Changing ocean temperatures and currents will force thousands of species to migrate polewards, including cod, herring, plaice and prawns.

By 2050, US fishermen may see a 50% reduction in Atlantic cod populations.

The predictions of "huge changes", published in the journal Fish and Fisheries, were presented at the AAAS annual meeting in Chicago.

As permafrost thaws in the Arctic, huge pockets of methane -- a potent greenhouse gas -- could be released into the atmosphere. Experts are only beginning to understand how disastrous that could be.

Los Angeles Times, By Margot Roosevelt, February 20

Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, Alaska -- Four miles south of the Arctic Circle, the morning sky is streaked with apricot. Frozen rivers split the tundra of the Seward Peninsula, coiling into vast lakes. And on a silent, wind-whipped pond, a lone figure, sweating and panting, shovels snow off the ice.

The young woman with curly reddish hair stops, scribbles data, snaps a photo, grabs a heavy metal pick and stabs at white orbs in the thick black ice.

"Every time I see bubbles, I have the same feeling," says Katey Walter, a University of Alaska researcher. "They are amazing and beautiful."

Beautiful, yes. But ominous. When her pick breaks through the surface, the orbs burst with a low gurgle, spewing methane, a potent greenhouse gas that could accelerate the pace of climate change across the globe.

International experts are alarmed. "Methane release due to thawing permafrost in the Arctic is a global warming wild card," warned a report by the United Nations Environment Programme last year. Large amounts entering the atmosphere, it concluded, could lead to "abrupt changes in the climate that would likely be irreversible."

[...]

The upper 3 meters (about 10 feet) of permafrost store 1.7 trillion metric tons of carbon, more than double the amount in the atmosphere today, according to a recent study in the journal Bioscience.

We are seeing thawing down to 5 meters," says geophysicist Vladimir Romanovsky of the University of Alaska. "A third to a half of permafrost is already within a degree to a degree and a half [Celsius] of thawing."

If only 1% of permafrost carbon were to be released each year, that could double the globe's current annual carbon emissions, Romanovsky notes. "We are at a tipping point for positive feedback," he warns, referring to a process where warming spurs emissions, which in turn generate more heat, in an uncontrollable cycle.

Walter's work is crucial, according to Romanovsky and others, because global warming hinges partly on the ratio of how much carbon is released as CO2 vs. how much as methane, a molecule that contains both carbon and hydrogen. Methane, although a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, breaks down more quickly. But when it does, it oxidizes into a carbon dioxide molecule, which can last more than a century in the atmosphere.

McClatchy, By Renee Schoof, February 24

WASHINGTON — Until now, most discussion of climate change has been about what scientific evidence shows is likely to happen between now and 2100. However, scientific research shows that the carbon dioxide gas released from burning fossil fuels lasts in the atmosphere much longer than mere decades.

David Archer, a leading climate researcher who teaches at the University of Chicago, has written a new book that looks at carbon dioxide's "long tail" and what it means for changes on Earth in the future.

If the world continues its heavy use of coal over the next couple of hundred years until it's essentially used up, it would take several centuries more for the oceans to absorb about three-quarters of the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere. In those centuries, there would be a "climate storm" that Archer says would be significantly worse than the forecast from now to 2100.

The remaining carbon dioxide — the long tail — would stay in the atmosphere for thousands of years, leaving a warmer climate. About 10 percent of it would still be in the atmosphere in 100,000 years, Archer wrote in "The Long Thaw: How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth's Climate."

Melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica force UN scientists to issue dramatic warning

The Independent, By Michael McCarthy, March 11

Sea levels are predicted to rise twice as fast as was forecast by the United Nations only two years ago, threatening hundreds of millions of people with catastrophe, scientists said yesterday in a dramatic new warning about climate change. Rapidly melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are likely to push up sea levels by a metre or more by 2100, swamping coastal cities and obliterating the living space of 600 million people who live in deltas, low-lying areas and small island states.

Low-lying countries with increasing populations, such as Bangladesh, Burma and Egypt, could see large parts of their surface areas vanish. Experts in Bangladesh estimate that a one-metre rise in sea levels would swamp 17 per cent of the country's land mass. Pacific islands such as Tuvalu, where 12,000 people live just a few feet above sea level, and the Maldives, would face complete obliteration.

Even Britain could face real challenges in lower-lying areas along the east coast, from Lincolnshire to the Thames estuary, with a much greater risk of catastrophic "storm surges" such as the great flood of 1953 that killed 307 people.

[...]

It is the accelerated melting of the vast, land-based ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, caused by rapidly rising temperatures at high latitudes, which is now speeding up the increase beyond anything previously forecast. The Greenland ice sheet, in particular, is not simply melting but melting "dynamically" – that is, it is collapsing in parts as meltwater seeps down through crevices and speeds up its disintegration. Critically, the four scientists said, this process was not taken into account in the AR4 report, leading to estimates of sea-level increase which were far too low.

They revealed remarkable figures showing just how fast it is now happening. Professor Steffen said Greenland was losing 200 to 300 cubic-kilometres of ice into the sea each year – about the same amount as all the ice in Arctic Europe. This on its own is causing the global sea level to rise by more than a millimetre a year, he added, whereas a decade ago Greenland's contribution to sea level rise was non-existent.

Dr Church said that the most recent satellite and in situ data showed seas were now rising by more than 3mm a year – more than 50 per cent faster than the average for the 20th century.

"As a result of improved estimates of the observed rise, the thermal expansion, the melting of the glaciers and of the ice sheets, we now have a much better quantitive understanding of why sea level is rising," he said. "Without significant, urgent and sustained emissions reductions, we will cross a threshold which will lead to continuing sea level rise of metres."

BBC, By Roger Harrabin, March 11

Carbon dioxide emissions from human activities are acidifying the oceans and threaten a mass extinction of sea life, a top ocean scientist warns.

Dr Carol Turley from Plymouth Marine Laboratory says it is impossible to know how marine life will cope, but she fears many species will not survive.

Since the Industrial Revolution, CO2 emissions have already turned the sea about 30% more acidic, say researchers.

It is more acidic now than it has been for at least 500,000 years, they add.

The problem is set to worsen as emissions of the greenhouse gas increase through the 21st Century.

"I am very worried for ocean ecosystems which are currently productive and diverse," Carol Turely told BBC News.

"I believe we may be heading for a mass extinction, as the rate of change in the oceans hasn't been seen since the dinosaurs.

"It may have a major impact on food security. It really is imperative that we cut emissions of CO2."

UK government carbon targets 'too weak' to prevent dangerous climate change, scientists say

Official advice being used to set Britain's first carbon budget is "naïvely optimistic" and will not stop dangerous climate change, experts from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research say

The Guardian, By David Adam, March 17

Proposed government carbon targets are too weak to prevent dangerous levels of global warming, according to a new analysis by leading scientists. Ministers are poised to introduce strict limits on UK carbon pollution when they announce Britain's first carbon budget next month. But experts from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research warn today that official advice used to set the budget is "naïvely optimistic" and will not stop dangerous climate change.

It comes after scientists at a global warming conference in Copenhagen last week warned that emissions are rising faster than expected, and that climate change could strike harder and faster than predicted.

The Tyndall Centre report analyses the conclusions of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), which said in December that ministers should aim to cut UK carbon emissions 34% by 2020, as part of worldwide efforts to limit temperature rise to 2C.

The Tyndall scientists say the committee's report is "inevitably and significantly compromised" because it focuses on limiting temperature rise to 2C above pre-industrial levels, which the EU defines as dangerous. The committee was forced to use "highly optimistic and sometimes unclear assumptions" to hit the 2C target, they say.

Chief among these, they say, was that global emissions of greenhouse gases would peak in 2016, despite little evidence that such a U-turn in soaring emisions within seven years is "in any way viable". A peak of emissions in 2020, which the Tyndall Centre says is more realistic, would leave governments facing an impossible challenge to hit the 2C target, it adds.

McClatchy, By Renee Schoof, March 16

WASHINGTON — China's top climate negotiator's visit to Washington on Monday sent a fresh signal that the two countries, which account for about half the world's greenhouse gas emissions, have a long way to go to reach a common agreement on how to cut emissions to prevent serious climate change.

China wants to become a "low-carbon society," but can't say when that will be achieved. And it doesn't want to be held accountable for emissions it produces to make goods for export, said Li Gao, the director of China's climate change office.

Li described China's actions and plans on climate while the head of China's negotiating team met with his American counterpart at the State Department. The meeting was part of the preparations for global negotiations on an agreement to reduce emissions in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December.

BBC, By Richard Black, March 23

The biggest ever investigation into "ocean fertilisation" as a climate change fix has brought modest results.

The idea is that putting iron filings in the ocean will stimulate growth of algae, which will absorb CO2 from air.

But scientists on the Lohafex project, which put six tonnes of iron into the Southern Ocean, said little extra carbon dioxide was taken up.

Germany's environment ministry had tried to stop the project, which green campaign groups said was "dangerous".

Leaders of the German-Indian expedition said they had gained valuable scientific information, but that their results suggested iron fertilisation could not have a major impact, at least in that region of the oceans.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says the government will not use the Endangered Species Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, even though climate change has been called a threat to polar bears.

Los Angeles Times, By Jim Tankersley, May 8

Washington -- The Interior Department today let stand a Bush administration policy that bars the federal government from considering the effects of global warming on polar bears and other protected species, a move that upset environmentalists and cheered oil and gas companies.

The decision means the government cannot use the Endangered Species Act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, even though Interior Secretary Ken Salazar explicitly blamed those emissions for the habitat erosion that landed the polar bear on the list of threatened species last year.

"The single greatest threat to the polar bear is the melting of Arctic Sea ice due to climate change," Salazar said in a conference call announcing the decision. But, he added, the Endangered Species Act "is not the appropriate tool for us to deal with what is a global issue."

Environmental groups vowed to sue.

IPS, By Stephen Leahy, May 7

UXBRIDGE, Canada - As climate change takes hold, even the mighty Himalayas and Hindu Kush mountain ranges are now losing their snow and ice.

These are the world's greatest repositories of snow and ice outside of the polar regions, and yet they may melt away in just 20 to 30 years, leaving more than a billion people desperately short of water, experts concluded in San Diego this week.

"There's been a super-rapid decline in the glaciers of the region," said Charles Kennel, senior strategist at the University of California San Diego Sustainability Solutions Institute and former director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Kennel told IPS that nearly all of the 20,000 glaciers in the Himalaya-Hindu Kush mountain ranges are in retreat and the meltwater from some has created enormous lakes held back by rockslides that will inevitably burst, endangering anyone living in the valleys below. The World Wildlife Fund calculates there are 2,000 glacial lakes forming in Nepal and around 20 are in danger of bursting. Several have already flooded valleys in the past two decades in Nepal and Tibet.

"We are trying to make it known that the Himalayas are to the issue of the world’s water supply problem what the Amazon rain forest is to the issue of deforestation," he said in reference to the "Ice, Snow, and Water" workshop convened at UC San Diego this week that included scientists from India, Nepal, Singapore and China.

[...]

Some of this temperature rise is due to soot, otherwise known as black carbon, from burning fossil fuels - especially diesel and coal - as well as burning wood and other biomass.

Black carbon heats the region in two ways. The dark particles absorb heat from the sun and collect at mountain latitudes. Secondly, this soot coats the snow, turning it grey and reducing the snow's albedo - ability to reflect sunlight - accelerating the melt, said Kennel.

A new study confirms that black carbon is responsible for much of the springtime snow and ice melt in Asia. "By inducing early retreat of snow cover, black carbon causes (Hindu-Kush-Himalaya-Tibetan Plateau) land areas to absorb more sunlight and warm disproportionately," said Marc Flanner of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado said in a statement.

Scientists note that black carbon is also responsible for much of the rapid meltdown underway in the Arctic. Preventing emissions of black carbon through the use of cleaner burning fuels, higher temperatures or filters would provide immediate cooling benefits because soot only remains in the atmosphere for a few weeks.

Eliminating black carbon emissions from fossil and biofuel sources could mean the springtime snow cover in Asia would increase substantially, recovering perhaps 25 percent of what has been lost in the past 100 years, Flanner said.

NYT, By Andrew C. Revkin, May 14

A new analysis halves longstanding projections of how much sea levels could rise if Antarctica’s massive western ice sheets fully disintegrated as a result of global warming.

The flow of ice into the sea would probably raise sea levels about 10 feet rather than 20 feet, according to the analysis, published in the May 15 issue of the journal Science.

The scientists also predicted that seas would rise unevenly, with an additional 1.5-foot increase in levels along the east and west coasts of North America. That is because the shift in a huge mass of ice away from the South Pole would subtly change the strength of gravity locally and the rotation of the Earth, the authors said.

Several Antarctic specialists familiar with the new study had mixed reactions to the projections.

But they and the study’s lead author, Jonathan L. Bamber of the Bristol Glaciology Center, in England agreed that the odds of a disruptive rise in seas over the next century or so from the buildup of greenhouse gases remained serious enough to warrant the world’s attention.

The world is unlikely to stop global warming rising above critical levels claim scientists in studies that calculate we could exceed safe emission targets in under 20 years.

The Telegraph, By Richard Alleyne, April 29

Two studies on climate change have concluded that rises in global temperatures are unlikely to remain below a critical threshold deemed by the world's governments to be safe.

Policy-makers have adopted a goal of keeping the average global rise in surface temperatures to no more than 3.6F (2C) above pre-industrial revolution levels.

This will mean stabilising CO2 emissions immediately and then substantially after 2015 to avoid the kind of levels in the atmosphere which will accelerate global warming.

But two studies from Oxford University and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research, published in Nature, claim that current levels of carbon emission – actually increasing at three per cent a year – will mean the temperature rise will be exceeded. There is now only a 50 per cent chance of avoiding it even if drastic measures are taken.

Rises above 3.6F (2C) are expected to lead to deforestation, flooding and droughts across the world.

Dr Vicky Pope, Head of Climate Change Advice at the Met Office, said: "Even with drastic cuts in emissions in the next 10 years, our results project that there will only be around a 50 per cent chance of keeping global temperatures rises below 3.6F (2 C).

"This idealised emissions scenario is based on emissions peaking in 2015 and quickly changing from an increase of 2–3 per cent per year to a decrease of 3 per cent per year. For every 10 years we delay action another 0.9F (0.5C) will be added to the most likely temperature rise."

New analysis shows warming could be double previous estimates

Eurekalert, May 19

CAMBRIDGE, MA --The most comprehensive modeling yet carried out on the likelihood of how much hotter the Earth's climate will get in this century shows that without rapid and massive action, the problem will be about twice as severe as previously estimated six years ago — and could be even worse than that.

The study uses the MIT Integrated Global Systems Model, a detailed computer simulation of global economic activity and climate processes that has been developed and refined by the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change since the early 1990s. The new research involved 400 runs of the model with each run using slight variations in input parameters, selected so that each run has about an equal probability of being correct based on present observations and knowledge. Other research groups have estimated the probabilities of various outcomes, based on variations in the physical response of the climate system itself. But the MIT model is the only one that interactively includes detailed treatment of possible changes in human activities as well — such as the degree of economic growth, with its associated energy use, in different countries.

Study co-author Ronald Prinn, the co-director of the Joint Program and director of MIT's Center for Global Change Science, says that, regarding global warming, it is important "to base our opinions and policies on the peer-reviewed science," he says. And in the peer-reviewed literature, the MIT model, unlike any other, looks in great detail at the effects of economic activity coupled with the effects of atmospheric, oceanic and biological systems. "In that sense, our work is unique," he says.

The new projections, published this month in the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate, indicate a median probability of surface warming of 5.2 degrees Celsius by 2100, with a 90% probability range of 3.5 to 7.4 degrees. This can be compared to a median projected increase in the 2003 study of just 2.4 degrees. The difference is caused by several factors rather than any single big change. Among these are improved economic modeling and newer economic data showing less chance of low emissions than had been projected in the earlier scenarios. Other changes include accounting for the past masking of underlying warming by the cooling induced by 20th century volcanoes, and for emissions of soot, which can add to the warming effect. In addition, measurements of deep ocean temperature rises, which enable estimates of how fast heat and carbon dioxide are removed from the atmosphere and transferred to the ocean depths, imply lower transfer rates than previously estimated.

[...]

And the odds indicated by this modeling may actually understate the problem, because the model does not fully incorporate other positive feedbacks that can occur, for example, if increased temperatures caused a large-scale melting of permafrost in arctic regions and subsequent release of large quantities of methane, a very potent greenhouse gas. Including that feedback "is just going to make it worse," Prinn says.

China alone could bring world to brink of climate calamity, claims US official

Business as usual in China would lead to 2.7C rise by 2050 even if all other countries slash emissions, says energy assistant

The Guardian, By Jonathan Watts, June 9

China must be far more ambitious in tackling climate change if the international community wants to prevent calamitous levels of global warming, a senior US official told counterparts in Beijing today.

David Sandalow, assistant secretary of state for energy, said the continuation of business as usual in China would result in a 2.7C rise in global temperatures by 2050 even if every other country slashed greenhouse gas emissions by 80%.

"China can and will need to do much more if the world is going to have any hope of containing climate change," said Sandalow, who is in Beijing as part of a high-level negotiating team that aims to find common ground ahead of the crucial Copenhagen summit at the end of this year.

No effective deal will be possible without the US and China, which together account for almost half of the planet's carbon emissions.

Since Barack Obama entered the White House, hopes for a closer working relationship on climate change have surged along with a softening of rhetoric, but the official negotiating positions of the two sides remain far apart.

The Guardian, By David Adam & Suzanne Goldenberg, June 12

Bonn & Washington - Progress towards a global treaty to fight climate change took an important step forward today when the US said it would not demand that China commits to binding cuts of its greenhouse gas emissions.

The move came on the last day of the latest round of UN climate change talks involving 183 nations, which aim to produce a deal in Copenhagen in December.

Jonathan Pershing, head of the US delegation in Bonn, said developing nations – seeking to grow their economies and alleviate poverty – would instead be asked to commit to other actions. These include boosting energy efficiency standards and improving the take-up of renewable energy, but would not deliver specific reductions. He said: "We're saying that the actions of developing countries should be binding, not the outcomes of those actions."

Only developed nations, including the US, would be expected to guarantee cuts. The pledge was included in a US blueprint for a climate change deal submitted to the Bonn meeting, which Pershing said was based on the need for the rich nations to cut greenhouse gases 80% by 2050.

IPS, By Julio Godoy, June 14

ROME - New scientific research suggests that climate change is taking place faster than foreseen in studies considered so far, according to environmental experts at a forum on climate change called by the Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment (GLOBE).

"We have run out of time," Ashok Khosla, president of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the world's largest environmental association, told IPS. "Climate change is happening at a swifter speed than we thought so far."

Khosla, an Indian national, holds degrees in physics and natural sciences, and has taught and worked on environmental and social economics since the 1970s. He leads several non-governmental organisations committed to human development.

Katherine Richardson, a leading marine biologist researching the effect of climate change effect on the oceans, told IPS, "Sea levels are rising 50 percent faster than expected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

"If humankind does not stop climate change in the immediate future, at the observed present rate sea levels shall rise by at least one metre by the year 2010." [er, 2100?...] This would aggravate the catastrophic consequences already forecast for human settlements along coasts, especially in the developing world, she said.

[...]

This degradation of the oceans has been provoked by a fast rise in greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions. "The emissions in the last three or four years were all above the estimated range of projections," Richardson said. "Since 1990, emissions have risen by 17 percent."

[...]

Khosla said that conventional wisdom on climate change is that average rise in temperatures should not go beyond two degrees Celsius in order to keep rising concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere below 400 parts per million (ppm).

"But we are already at 387 ppm," Khosla said. "We have practically no time to stop this growth of greenhouse gases emissions."

_{Tolerating prostitution is tolerating abuse and torture of women and children.}

New York Times, By John M. Broder, June 16

WASHINGTON — The impact of a changing climate is already being felt across the United States, like shifting migration patterns of butterflies in the West and heavier downpours in the Midwest and East, according to a government study to be released on Tuesday.

Even if the nation takes significant steps to slow emissions of heat-trapping gases, the impact of global warming is expected to become more severe in coming years, the report says, affecting farms and forests, coastlines and floodplains, water and energy supplies, transportation and human health.

The study was prepared by the United States Global Change Research Program, a joint scientific venture of 13 federal agencies and the White House. Under a 1990 law, the group is required to report every 10 years on natural and human-caused effects on the environment. The current study, which began in the George W. Bush administration, builds on the findings of the 2000 one.

Why do we allow the US to act like a failed state on climate change?

The Guardian, By George Monbiot, June 26

The Waxman-Markey climate bill is the best we will get from America until the corruption of public life is addressed

It would be laughable anywhere else. But, so everyone says, the Waxman-Markey bill which is likely to be passed in Congress today or tomorrow, is the best we can expect – from America.

The cuts it proposes are much lower than those being pursued in the UK or in most other developed nations. Like the UK's climate change act (pdf) the US bill calls for an 80% cut by 2050, but in this case the baseline is 2005, not 1990. Between 1990 and 2005, US carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels rose from 5.8 to 7bn tonnes.

The cut proposed by 2020 is just 17%, which means that most of the reduction will take place towards the end of the period. What this means is much greater cumulative emissions, which is the only measure that counts. Worse still, it is riddled with so many loopholes and concessions that the bill's measures might not offset the emissions from the paper it's printed on. You can judge the effectiveness of a US bill by its length: the shorter it is, the more potent it will be. This one is some 1,200 pages long, which is what happens when lobbyists have been at work.

There are mind-boggling concessions to the biofuels industry, including a promise not to investigate its wider environmental impacts. There's a provision to allow industry to use 2bn tonnes of carbon offsets a year, which include highly unstable carbon sinks like crop residues left in the soil (another concession won by the powerful farm lobby). These offsets are so generous that if all of them are used, US industry will have to make no carbon cuts at all until 2026.

[...]

A combination of corporate money and an unregulated corporate media keeps America in the dark ages. This bill is the best we're going to get for now because the corruption of public life in the United States has not been addressed. Whether he is seeking environmental reforms, health reforms or any other improvement in the life of the American people, this is Obama's real challenge.

Sheep getting smaller in Scotland due to climate change, study says

Los Angeles Times, By Karen Kaplan, July 3

Along with polar icecaps and sandy beaches, sheep on a remote Scottish island are gradually shrinking as a result of global warming, according to a study published today in the journal Science. The finding offers unusual proof that large animals are already evolving to adapt to changes wrought by climate change, experts said.

The average weight of sheep in the feral flock has been falling nearly 3 ounces per year since 1985, the researchers reported. The cumulative effect has been a 5% reduction in total body size.

That trend had puzzled scientists because they knew that evolution clearly favored larger sheep that are better equipped to survive the harsh winters of Hirta, a rocky outpost more than 100 miles west of mainland Scotland.

Now, using a sophisticated mathematical model, British and American researchers have concluded that warming temperatures have made it easier for scrawnier sheep to survive, thus reducing the average size of animals in the herd.

"Environmental change is having a substantial influence on the population," said Arpat Ozgul, a postdoctoral research associate at Imperial College London and lead author of the report.

Millions of people could starve because climate change shifts the timing of the seasons, according to a leading international aid agency.

The Telegraph, By Louise Gray, July 6

The regular arrival of the rains or a dry period to harvest staple crops ensures the majority of people around the world can grow enough food to eat.

But a new report by Oxfam has found that poor farmers in developing countries are increasingly finding the growing season is changing as a consequence of climate change.

The rains are coming too early or not at all and unexpected periods of drought or downpours are wiping out crops, leaving millions more people suffering hunger, the research said.

[...]

The results found a general trend in people reporting that transitional seasons like spring have shrunk or disappeared altogether [Sounds like New England!] and been replaced by long periods of heat with shorter warmer winters. The rain is more erratic, coming at unexpected times in and out of season and dry periods have increased in length and frequency.

For example, in Siberia it was reported spring is coming earlier and is much wetter while the summer has become much hotter and longer. In Bangladesh people report generally drier winters and more intense but less predictable monsoons.

CNN, By By Hilary Whiteman, July 5

They may live on separate continents, in different countries with differing cultures, but the same message is being echoed by the world's poor, according to a new report by aid agency Oxfam.

The report, "Suffering the Science," tells the stories of people who are discovering to their detriment that long-held truths about seasons and rainfall no longer apply.

"I travel a lot and people are always saying to me, 'the seasons have changed,'"Oxfam chief executive Barbara Stocking told CNN.

"I think there's a real sense of uncertainty. People have lost confidence. They have a very close relationship with the Earth, nature and climate and suddenly they're finding that it doesn't work anymore."

People such as Florence Madamu from western Uganda. "The sun is prolonged until the end of September," she told Oxfam. "And whenever it rains it rains so heavily it destroys all our crops in the fields. You can plant a whole acre or two and come out with nothing."

CanWest News Service, July 8

WASHINGTON — Arctic sea ice thinned dramatically between the winters of 2004 and 2008, with thin seasonal ice replacing thick older ice as the dominant type for the first time on record, data from a NASA Earth-orbiting spacecraft has revealed.

Calling it the most comprehensive survey to date, scientists from NASA and the University of Washington say the information provides "further evidence for the rapid, ongoing transformation of the Arctic's ice cover."

The Big Question: Will it really be possible to meet the G8's climate change targets?

The Independent, By Michael McCarthy, July 10

Why are we asking this now?

Because the leaders of the rich countries, at their meeting in Italy, have just made a great headline-grabbing pledge to cut their emissions of carbon dioxide, in the fight against climate change, by 80 per cent by 2050.

Why shouldn't that be realistic?

Because it is not at all clear what "80 per cent" means; it sounds like a terrific reduction, but 80 per cent of what? It might be taken to mean cutting emissions back to 80 per cent of what they are today, or what they were in 2000, say; while what UN climate scientists and environmental campaigners think is necessary, is to cut them back to 80 per cent of what they were in 1990, and that's a much tougher call (though it should be said that Britain has pledged to do this). Have a close look at the wording of the G8 communiqué issued after the agreement.

So what is the key part of the communiqué?

The leaders say in paragraph 65: "We also support a goal of developed countries reducing emissions of greenhouse gases in aggregate by 80 per cent or more by 2050 compared to 1990 or more recent years [our italics]." Those last four words, put in to keep all parties happy, especially the more reluctant ones, and make sure agreement was reached, in effect render the commitment so imprecise as to be meaningless.

The planet's future: Climate change 'will cause civilisation to collapse'

Authoritative new study sets out a grim vision of shortages and violence – but amid all the gloom, there is some hope too

The Independent on Sunday, By Jonathan Owen, July 12

An effort on the scale of the Apollo mission that sent men to the Moon is needed if humanity is to have a fighting chance of surviving the ravages of climate change. The stakes are high, as, without sustainable growth, "billions of people will be condemned to poverty and much of civilisation will collapse".

This is the stark warning from the biggest single report to look at the future of the planet – obtained by The Independent on Sunday ahead of its official publication next month. Backed by a diverse range of leading organisations such as Unesco, the World Bank, the US army and the Rockefeller Foundation, the 2009 State of the Future report runs to 6,700 pages and draws on contributions from 2,700 experts around the globe. Its findings are described by Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the UN, as providing "invaluable insights into the future for the United Nations, its member states, and civil society".

David Suzuki, Canada's eminent environmentalist, scientist, broadcaster, and author, discusses the importance of the boreal forest, the world's first pollinator sanctuary, and other environment related issues.

..... There is one bright spot in the sorry state of environmental policy in this country. Thanks in large part to the efforts of individual Canadians, First Nations, and environmental organizations, our municipal, provincial, and federal governments have made great strides to protect Canada's natural heritage -- our ecosystems such as forests, wetlands and rivers that are not only important habitat for biodiversity, but the source of clean air, clean water and other natural benefits that sustain the health and well-being of our communities.

..... Misunderstood as a foreboding landscape of black flies, bogs, and "rocks and trees and trees and rocks and water" (to quote comedy group the Arrogant Worms), the boreal's ecological value leaves one awestruck. This is a forest that spans the nation, like a great green cloak, from Newfoundland to the Yukon. It is larger than all of the other great forests of the planet, including the Congo Basin, the Amazon, and the Russian Taiga.

The boreal stores more freshwater in its wetlands and lakes and more carbon in its trees, soil and peatlands than anywhere on Earth. It supports three billion migratory songbirds, the world's largest herds of caribou, millions of waterfowl and shorebirds, and abundant populations of large predatory animals, including wolves, grizzly bears, polar bears, wolverines and lynx. And it is home to hundreds of First Nations communities that depend upon the region's ecosystems for their livelihoods and rich culture.

The boreal isn't the only place we've seen good news lately. The federal government has also made some moves to protect aquatic wildlife in our oceans, lakes and rivers. Last month, it issued a recovery strategy for the endangered North Atlantic right whale, which included identifying the 80-tonne mammal's critical habitat -- the habitat it needs to survive. Under Canada's Species at Risk Act, the identification of the whale's habitat triggers protection.

The government is also working to protect critical habitat for killer whales off the B.C. coast, though it took a lawsuit by the David Suzuki Foundation and other organizations to convince the government to act. We're cautiously optimistic that the whales may finally get the legal protection they need to survive.

Different levels of government in Canada have protected or committed to protect hundreds of thousands of hectares of forests, tundra, rare grasslands, lakes, rivers, and other terrestrial, freshwater and ocean ecosystems. This is cause for celebration.

But in the midst of the monumental landscapes that will forever be wild, one story that really inspires us is that of Canada's most unusual new park. This year the city of Guelph established the world's first pollinator sanctuary on a former landfill site on the edge of town. Heaps of rotting garbage within a sarcophagus of soil and clay are being restored with native vegetation to create much needed urban habitat for perhaps the hardest-working species on the planet: insect pollinators. Many of these critters are declining throughout Canada as a result of sprawl, pesticides, global warming and intensive agricultural activities. Their decline is worrisome, as about 90 per cent of flowering plants, including at least one-third of the food we eat, need pollinators, including apples, blueberries, carrots, broccoli and many other fruits and vegetables, as well as many seeds and grains too.

Ottawa readers will recall the recent controversy over neighbours' complaints about a private pollinator garden in Constance Bay. While it might seem an unusual approach to yard care, there is a genuine ecological benefit to allowing indigenous plants to grow.

Canadians have always celebrated the spectacular natural bounty that makes ours one of the most beautiful and prosperous nations on Earth -- from oceans and coastlines to mountains and foothills to prairies and grasslands. Conserving our land and waters is a gift to the planet, though much more needs to be done to protect the richness of wildlife and wilderness with which we are blessed, especially in our oceans, as less than 0.5 per cent of Canada's vast marine realm has legal protected status. If we continue to work together, we can ensure that we and our children and grandchildren will have much to celebrate, long into the future.
Source

_{Tolerating prostitution is tolerating abuse and torture of women and children.}

New York Times, By Mark Landler, July 19

GURGAON, India — India served notice on Sunday that it remains opposed to legally binding targets to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, digging in its heels against the United States as the Obama administration begins marshaling support for a new global agreement on climate change.

India voiced its rejection of the American position in an awkwardly public forum: during a visit by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to an energy-efficient office building in this city on the outskirts of New Delhi that was supposed to celebrate cooperation between India and the United States on climate policy.

In a closed-door meeting with Mrs. Clinton after she marveled at the building’s high-tech features, India’s environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, said, “There is simply no case for the pressure that we, who have among the lowest emissions per capita, face to actually reduce emissions.”

“If this pressure is not enough,” he continued, “we also face the threat of carbon tariffs on our exports to countries such as yours.”

Mr. Ramesh handed out his statement to reporters and reiterated his views at a news conference, with Mrs. Clinton and her special envoy for climate change, Todd Stern, standing stiffly behind him.

Washington Post, By Glenn Kessler, July 19

GURGAON, India -- The stage was set for a demonstration of how India and the United States could work together to reduce the impact of climate change: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton touring an environmentally-friendly "green" office building on the outskirts of the sprawling capital of New Delhi.

But the clash between developed and developing countries over climate change intruded on the high-profile photo opportunity midway through Clinton's three-day tour of India. Indian Environmental Minister Jairam Ramesh complained about U.S. pressure to cut a worldwide deal and Clinton countered that the Obama administration's push for a binding agreement would not sacrifice India's economic growth.

As dozens of cameras recorded the scene, Ramesh declared that India would not commit to a deal that would require it to meet targets to reduce emissions. "It is not true that India is running away from mitigation," he said. But "India's position, let me be clear, is that we are simply not in the position to take legally binding emissions targets."

"No one wants to in any way stall or undermine the economic growth that is necessary to lift millions more out of poverty," Clinton countered. "We also believe that there is a way to eradicate poverty and develop sustainability that will lower significantly the carbon footprint."

Both sides appearing to be playing to the Indian audience, with Ramesh taking the opportunity to reinforce India's bottom line.

Washington Post, By David A. Fahrenthold, July 20

This is not the funny kind of irony: Scientists say the chemicals that helped solve the last global environmental crisis -- the hole in the ozone layer -- are making the current one worse.

The chemicals, called hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), were introduced widely in the 1990s to replace ozone-depleting gases used in air conditioners, refrigerators and insulating foam.

They worked: The earth's protective shield seems to be recovering.

But researchers say what's good for ozone is bad for climate change. In the atmosphere, these replacement chemicals act like "super" greenhouse gases, with a heat-trapping power that can be 4,470 times that of carbon dioxide.

Now, scientists say, the world must find replacements for the replacements -- or these super-emissions could cancel out other efforts to stop global warming.

"Whatever targets you thought you were going to make," said David Fahey, a physicist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, "it will be undermined by the fact that you have . . . additional emissions that you hadn't planned on."

[...]

Last month, a group of scientists published a paper projecting that, if unchecked, the emissions would rise rapidly over the next 40 years. By 2050, they found, the amount of super greenhouse gases in the atmosphere might be equal to six or more years' worth of carbon dioxide emissions.

New estimate based on the forthcoming upturn in solar activity and El Niño southern oscillation cycles is expected to silence global warming sceptics

The Guardian, By Duncan Clark, July 27

The world faces a new period of record-breaking temperatures as the sun's activity increases, leading the planet to heat up significantly faster than scientists had predicted over the next five years, according to a new study.

The hottest year on record was 1998, and the relatively cool years since have led to some global-warming sceptics claiming that temperatures have levelled off or started to decline. However, the new research firmly rejects that argument.

The work is the first to assess the combined impact on global temperature of four factors: human influences such as CO2 and aerosol emissions; heating from the sun; volcanic activity; and the El Niño southern oscillation, the phenomenon by which the Pacific Ocean flips between warmer and cooler states every few years.

It shows that the relative stability in global temperatures observed in the last seven years is explained primarily by the decline in incoming sunlight associated with the downward phase of the 11-year solar cycle, together with a lack of strong El Niño events. These trends have masked the warming caused by CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

State prepares to deal with heat waves, flooding, wildlife die-offs and other expected results of climate change.
The first statewide plan in the country calls for adaptation and education. Public comment is sought.

Los Angeles Times, By Margot Roosevelt, August 4

Along with California's efforts to crack down on its own greenhouse gas emissions, state officials have begun preparing for the worst: heat waves, a rising sea level, flooding, wildlife die-offs and other expected consequences from what scientists predict will be a dramatic temperature increase by the end of this century.

California's Natural Resources Agency on Monday issued the nation's first statewide plan to "adapt" to climate change.

It offers strategies to cope with threats in seven sectors from firefighting to public health and water conservation. Resources Secretary Mike Chrisman called the plan an effort to acknowledge the problem and suggested that Californians "recognize their role in solving that problem and alter their behavior so that the change lasts."

The draft is "a good step in the right direction," said Gina Solomon of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group.

BBC, By David Shukman, August 13

One of the largest glaciers in Antarctica is thinning four times faster than it was 10 years ago, according to research seen by the BBC.

A study of satellite measurements of Pine Island glacier in west Antarctica reveals the surface of the ice is now dropping at a rate of up to 16m a year.

Since 1994, the glacier has lowered by as much as 90m, which has serious implications for sea-level rise.

[...]

Calculations based on the rate of melting 15 years ago had suggested the glacier would last for 600 years. But the new data points to a lifespan for the vast ice stream of only another 100 years.

[...]

"But the ice trapped behind it is about 20-30cm of sea level rise and as soon as we destabilise or remove the middle of the glacier we don't know really know what's going to happen to the ice behind it," he told BBC News.

"This is unprecedented in this area of Antarctica. We've known that it's been out of balance for some time, but nothing in the natural world is lost at an accelerating exponential rate like this glacier."

BBC, By Richard Black, August 27

Protecting societies against the impacts of climate change will be much more expensive than previously believed, according to a new analysis.

In 2007, the UN climate convention came up with a sum of $49-171bn per year.

The new report says the UN sums omitted important factors and the true cost will be two to three times higher.

Developing nations want rich countries to provide major sums for adaptation as part of the new UN climate deal due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December.

"The amount of money on the table at Copenhagen is one of the key factors that will determine whether we achieve a climate change agreement," said lead author Martin Parry, a visiting research fellow with the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London.

"But previous estimates of adaptation costs have substantially misjudged the scale of funds needed."

Reuters, By David Fogarty, September 14

Cardiff - A team of scientists studying rock samples in Africa has shown a strong link between falling carbon dioxide levels and the formation of Antarctic ice sheets 34 million years ago.

The results are the first to make the link, underpinning computer climate models that predict both the creation of ice sheets when CO2 levels fall and the melting of ice caps when CO2 levels rise.

The team, from Cardiff, Bristol and Texas A&M Universities, spent weeks in the African bush in Tanzania with an armed guard to protect them from lions to extract samples of tiny fossils that could reveal CO2 levels in the atmosphere 34 million years ago.

Levels of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, mysteriously fell during this time in an event called the Eocene-Oligocene climate transition.

"This was the biggest climate switch since the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago," said co-author Bridget Wade from Texas A&M University.

The study reconstructed CO2 levels around this period, showing a dip around the time ice sheets in Antarctica started to form. CO2 levels were around 750 parts per million, about double current levels.

WaPo Green Blog, By Juliet Eilperin, September 24

Climate researchers now predict the planet will warm by 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit (3.5 degrees C) by the end of the century even if the world's leaders fulfill their most ambitious climate pledges, a faster and broader scale of climate change than forecast just two years ago, according to a report released Thursday by the United Nations Environment Program.

The new overview of global warming research, aimed at marshalling political support for a new international climate pact by the end of the year, highlights the extent to which recent scientific assessments have outstripped the predictions issued by the Nobel Prize-winning U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007.

[...]

The group took the upper range targets of nearly 200 nations' climate policies -- including the House-passed climate bill that would reduce emissions 73 percent from 2005 levels by 2050, along with the European Union's pledge to reduce its emissions 80 percent compared to 1990 levels by 2050 -- and found that even under that optimistic scenario, the average global temperature was likely to warm by 6.3 degrees.

[...]

Corell, who has shared these findings with Obama officials as well as climate policymakers in China, added that current global carbon emissions are still rising rather than falling. "It's accelerating," he said. "We're not going in the right direction."

[...]

Other findings include the fact that sea level might rise by as much as six feet by 2100 instead of 1.5 feet as the IPCC had projected, and the Arctic may experience a sea-ice summer by 2030, rather than by the end of the century.